University of Birmingham
Jonathan retired from the University end of July 2023 after almost 10 successful years as Director of Procurement and Insurance, he was encouraged to join the University of Birmingham as they had a function that worked well within the procedures and processes but lacked innovation and supporting the wider ambitions of the University going forward.
During that time the department grew from 10 staff to over 40 staff via transferring staff that carried out contracting or major requisitioning across the campus. he was also procurement lead for Oracle transformation (supporting both the procurement of the system, within budget scope) and the P2P implementation. A significant part of the implementation was.
- Improving requisition turnaround speed (within 24 hours)
- Improving requisition accuracy, right first time
- Leading significant university staff system training
- A system maintenance programme (P2P)
He has also supported significant university projects as procurement lead, such as, the Capital Plan and the Dubai Campus.
Local Government
He commenced working in local government in 1988 at Birmingham City Council where I worked as a senior buyer, He was later promoted to principal buyer (with a team), and then Commercial Manager (looking after, stores, logistics, inventory management, buying and customer services). During that time I was involved in various transformation and systems implementation projects.
In 2000 Jonathan moved to Wolverhampton City Council as Head of Procurement, managing a procurement spend of circa £150 million per annum with 10 staff. During that time I improved specification development (via specification groups), improved customer services for procurement and led several key projects, such as. Improving cabinet reporting and documentation, leading on waste, IT, utilities, and construction projects.
In 2006 he became regional procurement lead, supporting 38 West Midlands councils in improving savings performance, procurement efficiencies in key categories such as, utilities, home to school transport and reverse auctions etc. in 2012 they won a SOPO award for delivering £1 billion in additional savings for the West Midlands Region over the duration of the project.
In 2013 Jonathan was seconded to the LGA as procurement lead to support key national projects, such as Waste Recycling, IT procurement improvement and construction pre-qualification of suppliers. he also lead a case study sharing project. The role acted as national advisor on procurement to the local authorities.
Teaching
He worked as a part-time tutor from 1990 to 2015 and currently do ad-hoc work. Jonathan recently did a “careers in procurement” session for the Business School.
He has taught for the Institute of Operations Management, AQA and the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply (CIPS) at Dudley College (1990 to 2006) and for CIPS for Pennwood (2006 to 2014) and then Freelance / project based. He has also spoken at numerous seminars on improving procurement performance.
Jonathan has also written a study guide on Public Sector Strategic Procurement (CIPS) and a study guide on Procurement Operations for Cheltenham Tutorial College.
He has a passion and enthusiasm for procurement, senior management and teaching and helping to improve performance.